The Kathleen Willey Interview

What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited slightly for readability’s sake.

First off, give my audience a quick rundown of what initially happened between you and Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.

I went to see Bill Clinton, who was a friend of (both me) and my late husband. I was in the middle of a really, really serious financial family crisis. I had been a volunteer at the White House. I had volunteered on Bill Clinton’s inaugural and I just decided…my volunteer days were over and I needed a paying job. I went to see the President to ask him for help, to see if he could help me find employment in the federal government. It didn’t necessarily have to be at the White House, just with the government.

It was one of the worst days in my life. He took advantage of that situation…

Now, explain to people how it came to be known that Bill Clinton groped you during that visit.

I was subpoenaed by Paula Jones’ attorneys. They were looking for women who had suffered at Bill Clinton’s hands. They heard about my story…

From Linda Tripp, right?…

…I suspect it was Linda Tripp…I was then subsequently subpoenaed by Monica’s attorneys and deposed under oath in her sexual harassment case.

I’ve read a transcript of your examination on the stand and it seemed pretty obvious to me that you were being very evasive. You seemed to be trying to do everything humanly possible to give the impression that nothing had happened between you and Bill Clinton without actually perjuring yourself. Is that the case?

I did not want to tell that story. My intention was for that story to go to my grave with me. Eventually, I just knew I had to tell the story and I did.

Like I said, in the transcript, you did everything you could to avoid talking about it and got to the point where you had to perjure yourself or tell the story, right?

That’s absolutely correct…and I had been threatened a few days before that and all kinds of things had been happening to me.

Like what? Tell me about that.

Strange phone calls. You know, “We’re getting ready to turn the power off, do you have small children or elderly people there?” The power company doesn’t do that and the power never went off.

Then, one day, I live out in the country, in a very rural part of Virginia and…I walked out of my house one day and I had three flat tires. I wondered how that had happened and came to find out that someone had come down with a nail gun and shot the tires out in the sidewalls. I mean, you don’t run over nails and get them in the sidewalls.

And I had a beloved pet of 13 years that disappeared…

That was your cat, right?

That was my cat. I put the word out…and put up pictures saying she was missing..and one morning, I was out walking at first light with my dogs, a couple of days before the deposition, and this stranger approached me and asked if I had ever found the cat. He was very knowledgable about my cat, and talked about what a nice cat he was — talking about him in the past tense. Then he asked me if I had gotten my tires repaired — “Did you ever get those tires fixed” — which was when I knew something was going on. Then, the worst part was when he threatened my children by name….He said, “You’re just not getting the message, are you?” The message was clear, it was to lie at that deposition in two days and not tell the story of what Bill Clinton did to me.

That person was connected to the Clintons, correct?

It’s my opinion that he was.

You actually named him in the book; I read the name (Cody Shearer), but I didn’t know if you were giving that out in interviews or not…

…He had an alibi — he was investigated after I was shown a picture of him, and his alibi was not so much iron clad as uncheckable. These private investigators and their operatives have been on the Clinton payroll for years, as damage control, to come after someone like me — and they’re very good at what they do. Don’t think for one minute that they don’t walk around with all kinds of alibis in their back pockets. I have my opinion. I know who I saw, I know who I talked to, but that doesn’t mean I can prove it.

I understand. Now, you’ve talked about some of the harassment you’ve suffered. Can you tell me about that and also about your manuscript being stolen recently?

Well, over Labor Day week-end, someone broke into my home, in the middle of the night, while I was upstairs asleep…They wanted it to look like a botched burglary…I think they came in through the screen…they took my purse, which I later found out in the woods. They didn’t take the credit cards, but they took the money that was in my wallet. They broke the antenna off of my car, they tampered with my satellite system, my wireless internet system, and took the manuscript and this is within days of two stories in a national magazine and newspaper (saying) I was almost finished with my book and that it was going to be published in November. I think the person that came in here, came in here with a mission. That mission was to terrify me and get their hands on my manuscript.

Near the end of the book, you had a fascinating little paragraph on some of the harassment that other authors of Clinton books have suffered. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Well, we’ve got just any number of people who have criticized or questioned the Clintons and have been subjected to this kind of behavior — former state troopers in Arkansas, of course, other women like me. Our stories are so similar it’s eerie. I mean, we all tell the same stories.

Juanita Broaddrick and Gennifer Flowers have had similar stories, haven’t they?

Sure, they’re all very similar and I have to tell you — I’ve had other women call me, who wouldn’t give me their names, who’ve told me stories that were so similar to mine that I’ve had hair standing up on my arms — at Bill Clinton’s hands, in the Oval Office, at other places, in other years. This is not going to stop. The man has a serious problem…he’s a sex addict….(Hillary) covers it up, she enables his behavior….

Now, one thing I have heard used against you on a number of occasions is that you asked for a job in the White House after Bill Clinton groped you. Can you tell me why you did that?

I didn’t ask for it and I am glad you have given me the opportunity to address this. After my husband’s death, if I thought our financial situation was bad, it was far worse than I thought it was going to be. I had children in college, I was a soccer mom, a housewife, I didn’t finish college, and my best opportunity at that point for my family was to gain employment with the federal government. I didn’t ask for a job in the complex, sitting right outside the Oval Office. That was the last place I wanted to be. I asked Bill Clinton to help me get a job anywhere in the federal government — in Richmond, Virginia — Washington — anywhere. I was willing to move. That’s what it was about. I didn’t ask for a job in the White House per se, I asked for a job anywhere within the federal government.

Was there any thought on your part that maybe, “Gee, he might do this to help keep me quiet, that sort of thing?”

That he would get me a job?

Yeah, maybe he’d think, “If I get her a job, she won’t testify — if it ever came to that.” I know it hadn’t come up at that point.

Who knows what he thought? I can’t answer that question. I will tell you, I never got a job. They certainly toyed with me. Supposedly, I was hired by his reelection campaign. I was given a start date, told where to be, when to be there, told what my salary was going to be, and never heard from them again.

Now you’ve said that you’ve learned that your husband was involved in shady financial dealings with the Clintons. Can you tell us a bit about those?

After his death, some dear friends of mine told me that my husband had told them that during the election, during the campaign, he had been carrying suitcases full of cash to Little Rock. I never knew that. He never told me that. I never saw evidence of that. He never shared that with me. So, needless to say, I was shocked by that.

I can’t imagine that he would just make that up and…I don’t know, I want to find out. I want to pursue that.

And you said you think that there’s a possibility that the Clintons may have been involved in his death. Is that correct?

What I said was — and again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address this, too — what I said was that I finally was emotionally able to look at my husband’s autopsy report while writing the book and there were some things in there that got my attention. I’m not an expert and I don’t pretend to be, but I did take the autopsy report and show it to an expert, a criminology and forensic expert, and she saw some pretty compelling inconsistencies in that report and she suggested that I pursue it, that I get further opinions, which I am doing. I feel like I owe that to his memory, I owe that to my children, and for my own piece of mind. I want to know what happened. That’s what I talked about briefly in my book.

I got you. That makes perfect sense…just, as an interesting side note, you complained a bit about the atmosphere in general in the White House — how people didn’t seem to respect the office. They commonly used bad language, didn’t dress appropriately, etc. Tell me a bit about that.

Ever seen the movie Animal House? It was kind of like that. There was no dress code, pizza boxes all over the Oval Office, everybody’s feet up on the furniture, foul language, obviously no respect for the…White House, for the office of the presidency. It was pretty appalling and I witnessed that on a regular basis. I don’t think it’s supposed to be that way.

Are you disappointed that feminists haven’t stuck by you? After all, you were groped by Bill Clinton and unquestionably, the Clintons have worked to destroy your reputation. Do you ever sit and wonder, “Gee, where are all these feminists who are supposed to be looking out for ordinary women like me…”

Of course, I did. Every night, when I was being raked over the coals by the Clintonistas, of course I did. Believe me, I appealed to the feminists. I called the National Organization for Women. I asked for their help, but they weren’t going to criticize him. He was their guy. He was their man. He was pro-choice…they were in no position to criticize him or validate me and they didn’t.

You know, think about it: where are they today? You don’t see representatives of NOW. Where are the feminists? Where are they? I think Bill and Hillary Clinton pretty much shut them down. The feminists, NOW, they’re all about one issue: abortion. They’re not talking about women’s rights, being an advocate for women, or equality in the work place. Those aren’t issues anymore. It’s abortion, plain and simple.

Along similar lines, a big part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency has involved playing up her gender and promising to stand up for single mothers. Yet, you’re a woman who was a loyal Democrat and a Clinton supporter and after you were victimized by her husband, Hillary helped work to try to personally destroy you. What message do you give to women who are considering voting for Hillary in…

Well, that’s one of the reasons that I wrote my book. I hope that women, men and women, but women especially, young women, first time voters, who are excited about voting for a woman for President for the first time in our history — this woman claims to be a champion for women, a women’s advocate, a feminist, but look what she has done to me. Look what she has done. And believe me, when I say look what she’s done, she gears up the war room. She enables his behavior, she cleans up after him. It has been going on since before they were married and it will continue because his behavior has not stopped. This is no advocate for women. If this is what she’s going to do to women like me, who unfortunately crossed paths with her husband, a sex addict and a predator, she is not a champion for women and she is not a women’s advocate. I hope that young women will at least read my book, read my story, and think about what it would be like to be caught in the crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Well, I talk about everything we’ve discussed today in detail. I talk about what it was like. I talk about the harassment. I talk about the threats to my safety — the threats to my children, the loss of a beloved pet, and being afraid to live in my own home. I think that no man or woman, in this country, should be subjected to this sort of harassment, intimidation, and threats. This is not what our forefathers had in mind for us. Hopefully, people will read this book and arm themselves with knowledge before they go into the voting booth and vote.